EDITORIAL: A tipping point on affordable housing

New Jersey’s decades-long effort to deliver sufficient amounts of affordable housing has long stumbled over the uncertainty of municipal obligations.

Some communities do their part, others don’t. Many locals insist their own town services and infrastructure cannot handle the necessary additional development. Sometimes that’s a valid concern, other times — especially among wealthier towns — it’s nothing more than an excuse to keep lower-income residents out.

Legal battles date back to the 1970s, and they ultimately found that each town in New Jersey has a responsibility to provide its fair share of affordable units. Determining that fair share was once the purview of the Council on Affordable Housing (COAH), but that process largely fell apart nearly 20 years ago, and of late the effort has fallen back into the hands of judges, more or less in piecemeal fashion.

No one over that time has bothered to meaningfully pin down exactly how many affordable housing units the state should provide — until last week, when a Mercer County judge pegged that number at 155,000 statewide by 2025. While that ruling could still be challenged, local officials and housing advocates now have something concrete with which to work.

The decision by Superior Court Assignment Judge Mary Jacobson was not made hastily. The ruling spells out in detail a methodology for determining municipal quotas, something earlier affordable-housing decisions lacked. Jacobson applied those concepts to all of the municipalities in the state to determine the obligations of the two towns targeted in the case before her – Princeton and West Windsor.

That process, and the statewide numbers, can now be used to frame negotiations with towns. Nearly 200 municipalities had already reached settlements with the Fair Share Housing Center to determine their obligations, but more than 100 more have continued to fight.

Jacobson’s ruling seems the very definition of compromise. The number of statewide units falls in between the totals floated by housing advocates on the high end and municipal leaders on the low end. Local officials were willing to accept future quotas, but challenged the need to meet retroactive “gap” responsibilities from the period between 1999 and 2015 when the old COAH rules had been essentially scrapped. Advocates were shooting for everything, with little or no consideration to what communities could reasonably accommodate.

Neither side is thrilled with the ruling, but both may be comfortable enough to accept it, or at least large portions of it. We recommend embracing the numbers and moving forward. Both sides have valid positions; a compromise in this case feels particularly appropriate. The next step should be for those communities that have continued to balk at a settlement with Fair Share to work out an agreement and establish their own quotas. Failure to do so can only open them up to bigger problems, including challenges from developers holding all the cards.